Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has announced a crime branch (CB) inquiry in to Damu Nagar slum fire incident. He has also announced rehabilitation measures and compensation package to the fire victims while replying on calling attention in Lower House on Monday.
Responding to a call attention motion moved by Shiv Sena MLA Sunil Prabhu, Mr Fadnavis said that he would hold a meeting on Tuesday with local legislator, local citizens’ action committee. He also announced that he would discuss the issue with stakeholders.
Initially, it was the minister for housing development Prakash Mehta who was responding to the queries.
The MLAs from Mumbai including Amin Patel, Varsha Gaikwad, Prakash Surve, Chhagan Bhujbal raised various issues including raising the compensation to '25,000, along the lines of Behrampada fire incident and also insisted for affected people to be rehabilitated on the same land.
Mr Surve and Mr Prabhu also demanded that new ration cards, voter identity cards and Aadhaar cards must be provided to slum dwellers since their hutments had been gutted in the fire. The members demanded the compensation be raised to Rs 25,000 instead of the current amount of Rs 3,800.
To this, Mr Mehta replied that the government would conduct special camps for providing all the documents. He made it clear that it was not possible to rehabilitate the slum dwellers in the same place since as per the court’s orders, rehabilitation cannot be done on forestland.
Also, Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Ashish Shelar questioned whether the fire was the outcome of two builders’ war, including one from the local area and the other from outside, or not. To this the chief minister said that he would ask the CB officials to conduct an inquiry into the fire incident.
When Mr Mehta pointed out that government was ready to rehabilitate the slum dwellers on an adjacent land piece which is owned by Maharashtra Goraksha Mandal and the local citizens’ action committee headed by former MLA Ram Pandagale had conveyed that they would convey it to government whether they are ready for the same. Mr Mehta said that the government was ready for rehabilitation in a matter of three days.
The chief minister would be announcing the final decision on compensation and the rehabilitation on Tuesday in the House.
